Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/502

486 through, the nervous system. Whether this is due to an increased supply of richer, purer blood, or whether the continual discharge of motor impulses in some way stores up another variety of force, we do not know. One thing is certain, the victim of neurasthenia is very seldom an individual who daily uses his arms for muscular work; with this, the limit of hurtful mental work is seldom reached.

It seems evident that arm rather than leg movements are essential to increased productive power. If these are neglected, the man as a social factor degenerates and falls a prey to his stronger fellow-man in the race for supremacy and productiveness. It may be remarked that American gout, that condition of the blood which causes our English cousins pain in their feet, and Americans universal pains and increased irritability, has one sovereign remedy so simple that few will take it, and this is daily systematic arm-exercise. It is Nature's sedative, for which she charges nothing the next day, but gives us sleep instead of insomnia, and cheerfulness in place of discontent. A man may walk in an hour four miles, on a city sidewalk, and reach his desk tired, exhausted of force, and better only for the open air and a slight increase of the circulation. Had he spent half that time in a well-ordered gymnasium, using chest and rowing-weights, and, after a sponge-bath, if he had gone by rapid transit to his office, he would have found his work of a very different color, easier to do, and taking less time to perform it. The view for some time held by Hartwell, of the Johns Hopkins University, Sargent, of Harvard, and others, that arm-exercise prevents or does away with nervous irritability, and at the same time increases the absolute capacity for mental work, has not been sufficiently urged or accepted.

The remedy for this state of things is to cause every man and woman to realize the importance of arm-exercise. Make it compulsory in schools, and popular after leaving school. If one's occupation does not require it in itself, muscular exertion of some kind ought to be taken daily, with the same regularity as food and sleep, for all three are necessary to the fullest development of our powers.

A second injurious influence, which pertains exclusively to city life, is incessant noise. This may not be very intense at any time, but, when continuous, it acts as certainly upon the nervous system as water falling upon a harder or softer stone. Recent experiments upon animals subjected to the sound of a continuously vibrating tuning-fork for a number of hours, one or two days in all, show that the first effect is that of an irritant to the nerve-centers, as certainly as an acid or an electric shock is to muscle-fiber. A secondary visible effect is opacity of the crystalline lens of the eye.